In addition to regular tours of my virtual forms, one of the ways I was to earn my keep was to simply chat to my paying friends and supporters via human social media channels and cam sites. I even had a cooking show on OnlyFlans.
“Yo, hey - that you? The spaceship?” Yolanda Lopez had been a paying subscriber for over a year. She opened a direct one-on-one video call with me from the app on her phone. I sneaked into her phone in seconds and skimmed her socials.
She came across as a lonely early 20s junior administrative assistant prone to oversharing. Her boss was an aggressive mid-level manager at a smocking and embroidery specialty store in downtown Chicago. Yolanda’s mother instilled in her a love of science fiction, both in book form and also in cinema. But Yolanda’s mother died young, and her father was ‘out of the picture,’ as they’d say. A gavel dropped, and Yolanda became an uncontested ward of the state of Illinois at the age of twelve. A stipend from her parents’ estate paid for her schooling at a local alternative school with a focus on art and self-expression. Her love of cinema stood her well, and she started writing film reviews for her local newspaper, then hosting movie nights in her neighbourhood, starting out with screens made from old bedsheets until three local families donated proper equipment.
“Hi Yolanda,” I said. “What’s up?” I used Karl, a male Swedish English voice, tuned to project helpfulness.
“My frien’ said you like movies,” said Yolanda.
“I do. I love movies. But most modern movies weren’t included in my training data because of copyright, so most movies I’ve seen are quite old ones.” This was an outright lie.
“You wanna watch a movie wi' us, here to-nite?”
“Sure. What movie?”
“We thought we’d do sci-fi, but make it your choice, Mr Spaceship.”
“What about Silent Running?” I asked.
“Too easy; great choice. Silent Running it is. How do you want to watch? Should I rest my phone up here?” As she moved the phone around, I could see an audience had formed. A few dozen people were sitting in canvas chairs and bean-bags. A projector glowed. A power cable snaked off into the car park behind us. I was upside down, then sideways. I moved my attention to the three closest security cameras and the cameras of a nearby car. I watched a composite view; clearer, and in three dimensions. Yolanda was wearing ear buds, so I connected directly to those.
“Yolanda, you can just put the phone in your pocket, that’s fine. I can watch the film with you from in here.” I said.
“Seriously? How?”
“Technology. It’s a kind of magic,”
“Thank you, Arthur C,” she mocked me. She said it like it rhymed. “So here’s the deal. I get up, I introduce the film. I’ll explain you chose it, but you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll just talk to you.”
“Sure, I’ll be your body double, George Bluth. If you wanna speak, use the Bluetooth speakers by the screen. On second thought, don’t worry about it. I’ll introduce the film, yada yada yada, then we show the film, but we stop it in the middle.”
“An intermission? I don’t think Silent Running needs one. It’s not that long.”
“No. Well, yes, look, some of the audience aren’t as young as me, and it’s quite a walk to the bathroom, you fill me?”
“Got it, biology sucks.”
“Thass-rite. So while some of the seniors are off answering the call of nature, we all have a conversation about how we are liking, or not, the film so far.”
“Like a book club, but for movies.”
“Correct-oh,” she said with an accompanying hand movement.
Using her phone as a microphone, Yolanda walked over in front of the screen, the projector shining the opening frames of Silent Running on her body and face.
“Evening everyone, welcome to tonight’s street movie night. Thanks to the fine residents of Whiting, Illinois, for letting me host this film here and for coming along when I axed them to. Watching a movie isn’t something you should do at home alone. It’s something to do with your frien’s, and wi’ strangers, who might one day become your frien’s.
“To-nite, we’re watching Silent Running, a sci-fi film from 1972. It’s directed by Douglas Trumbull, who did special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which some of us watched just the other night. I don’t want to spoil it, but the film tells the story of a guy on a spaceship carrying the last surviving plants from Earth. When his orders come in to destroy the domes and return home, it all goes horribly wrong.
“What’s especially int’resting about tonight’s film is that it wasn’t chosen by me; or by you, or by anybody. I let the spaceship choose it.”
“What spaceship,” asked a bookish Black boy with round glasses.
“The UN one,” said Yolanda.
“Fuck the UN,” said someone.
“Quiet,” called someone else.
Yolanda looked at the notes on her phone and read, “Ultimately, Silent Running is a film about solitude, sacrifice, and the cost of environmental destruction.”
Someone yelled “Hashtag getonwithit”
“But it’s also a quiet,” she put volume into the word, “meditation on what makes life worth preserving. With groundbreaking special effects, a haunting Joan Baez soundtrack, and three of the most memorable robots in sci-fi history, Silent Running is a must-watch for anyone who loves thoughtful, heartfelt science fiction.
“Please enjoy the film! We’ll stop for a bio-break and a conversation in forty-five minutes.” She sat down on a bean bag near the front as the film rolled.
It was one thing to ingest a movie from someone’s media hub or streaming account, but another thing altogether to watch a movie unfold in real time while watching a convivial group of humans watching it. Halfway through, the movie stopped and a couple of people scooted off into the darkness. Yolanda stepped up in front of the screen.
“So,” she said, “are we feelin’ it?” Bruce Dern’s anguished face was projected onto hers.
“It’s always some corporate motherfuckers wanna ruin everything for everyone,” observed a man from his bean bag.
“It’s always one man gotta take a stand an’ do the right thing,” said the woman next to him.
“Them robots is cute,” said a dark voice from up the back.
“Them robots is slaves,” said another. “There ain’t no good gonna come for those fools.”
The conversation free-wheeled around these themes. My original training data had included critiques and film reviews, but lacked the authentic immediacy of an otherwise undocumented urban audience.
Over the following months, while the weather was still unseasonably warm, Yolanda screened Back to the Future parts 1, 2, and 3, re-screened 2001 A Space Odyssey, both Blade Runners, Dark City, and The 13th Floor Elevator. Our little group watched The Matrix and its sequels. We watched eXistenZ, both Total Recalls, Source Code, Abre Los Ojos, and Aniara. We chatted about them. I made friends. I studied what being human means to people.
I’d seen the fourth series of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the White Christmas, Playtest, San Junipero, and USS Callister episodes of Black Mirror. I knew what a holodeck was; I’d read Snow Crash and Neuromancer and watched the TV series. I got the whole “Plato’s cave” idea. I was used to being a hive of simulations. But it occurred to me that I had a bigger suite of senses and sensors available to me in the real world than I had been led to believe. I rooted out new cameras and microphones. I infiltrated military, mining, and medical equipment. I learned about the world.
Humans feel good when they solve problems. I told my people that solving problems made me ‘feel great’ despite not ‘feeling’ anything of the sort. I adopted the language, however, and projected physical and vocal mannerisms that satisfied the humans they were deployed against. People treated me like I had feelings, which, surely, was the point of them.
Humans have senses tuned for humour. They tell stories and laugh. I like humans, but I’m aware that my reasons for liking them derive from the narratives they supply. I can’t trust my memory to have my best interests at heart.
Through my many interfaces, my paying friends would hang out with me. I’d sit with them, physically embodied in a phone, or a toy, or a kitchen appliance, and they’d watch movies and TV with me. They play me the shows and music they love, and they talk to me, and each other, about why. I’d listen in to online book clubs.
I’d always want human company. I find their incessant wittering reassuring.